


The Ship of Theseus

by Franzbibliothek



Series: Baby Xavier [2]
Category: X-Men (Comicverse), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Fake/Pretend Relationship, M/M, art gallery exhibits, dubious ethical arguments, hitler clone, older Erik, post-Astonishing X-Men, set sometime during X-Men: Blue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-13
Updated: 2019-06-13
Packaged: 2020-05-02 14:46:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19201030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Franzbibliothek/pseuds/Franzbibliothek
Summary: It began as a vague sense of uneasiness coiled in the juncture where Erik’s neck met the back of his head. At first, Erik didn’t think much of it, there were always things on his mind worth being uneasy about: The young X-Men throwing themselves at danger, the time machine in the basement, or the amount of hair left behind in the shower drain. That Erik felt occasional bouts of agitation in strange moments was not in itself strange, and hadn't seemed worthy of concern until a day later found Erik drawn outside the house as if someone had simply looped a string around his mind and tugged. That was when Erik realized that the throbbing disquiet in his head was not, in fact, his own.





	The Ship of Theseus

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I know nothing about Descartes or philosophy except from what I faintly remember from my freshman intro course.

It began as a vague sense of uneasiness coiled in the juncture where Erik’s neck met the back of his head. At first, Erik didn’t think much of it, there were always things on his mind worth being uneasy about: The young X-Men throwing themselves at danger, the time machine in the basement, or the amount of hair left behind in the shower drain. That Erik felt occasional bouts of agitation in strange moments was not in itself strange, and hadn't seemed worthy of concern until a day later found Erik drawn outside the house as if someone had simply looped a string around his mind and tugged. That was when Erik realized that the throbbing disquiet in his head was not, in fact, his own.

By the end of the day, Erik boarded a plane leaving Madripoor for New York and found himself slipping into a large university auditorium, sitting discreetly in the back, drawing little notice despite arriving towards the tail end of the lecture:

"Descartes’s interest in his experiment was to find a methodological way of understanding reality objectively. Remember, Descartes was an accomplished mathematician, a scientist, and this was reflected in his process..." Charles Xavier droned from behind a lecturn.

Charles wore pressed pleated trousers, a jacket and a tie, despite his audience being barely dressed as was all too common for young people nowadays. The large screen display behind him seemed like a reluctant resignation to modern pedagogical practice given how little he actually referred to the slides. It seemed painfully obvious to Erik as he took in Charles’s every gesture and turn of phrase, that this was an older man in a younger man’s body. Or perhaps Erik was simply deluding himself into seeing his old friend in a stranger who wore Charles’s face and spoke with his voice. Erik's internal debate ran round and round in his head, like a dog biting his own tail bloody.

The student next to Erik aligned brightly colored fruits on her laptop screen with avid interest, ignoring the lecture. Erik tried not to think about how when he was her age he had wanted nothing more than to be allowed to attend classes like this. He had been reliably informed by a number of people that this train of thought only put him more firmly in the category of bitter old man.

"...And ultimately most people consider Descartes experiment a failure. For all his genius he was unable to account for the existence of the world outside of his own subjective perspective, and... I think that is where we can stop for today,"—there was an immediate audible rush of laptops clicking shut and notebooks stuffed into bags—"enjoy the weekend, but please remember to submit your assignments before class on Monday!" Anything else Charles might have added was drowned out by the sound of two hundred bodies rising from their chairs seemingly as one.

Erik wandered down to the bottom of the auditorium once the stampede had cleared, and stood on the edge of a fawning cloud of students waiting for their moment with their professor. Erik raised his arm up in not quite a wave.

“May I have a minute?” Erik called out over their heads and watched Charles turn his head and lift his eyebrows in a polished bit of playacting, as if he hadn’t been entirely aware of Erik’s presence since the moment Erik had stepped onto the continent. He had, after all, been the one who called.

“Of course,” Charles replied with an undercurrent of something like resignation as he gave the rest of his lingering students an apologetic smile. "I'm afraid I have to head out early, but if any of you have any questions, please send me an email or come by my office hours."

The students dispersed, a few sending Erik curious glances before making their exits. Erik had stopped caring what the world thought of him long ago, let alone a few straggling undergraduates, but he couldn’t help but wonder who they took him for: a colleague, probably, a friend, maybe, or, possibly, a husband. Unless, of course, they thought he looked too old. Erik shoved his hands in his pockets and banished the whole ridiculous train of thought away, so that Charles could at least pretend he hadn’t overheard it.

It wasn't that Erik had any illusion that Charles wasn't listening to his every thought, but with telepaths it was better not to try to play at their games. It only ever made them smug.

“Are you ready to go?” Charles asked, stepping off the platform, satchel hanging from his shoulder. Even death, resurrection, and a new body hadn’t changed the fact that stuffy academic was Charles Xavier’s natural state. Erik nodded and they fell into step towards the closest exit. “Are you going to tell me how you found me?” Charles asked, just a touch too nonchalant.

“As if you haven’t been tugging at my head for the past couple of days,” Erik said, tapping a finger against his temple. “and also teaching under the name Charles Eisenhardt wasn’t exactly subtle, old friend.”

Charles’s lips quirked as held the door open for Erik to pass through. “I know you’ve used Xavier more than once, it only seemed fair,” Charles said.  

Any retort Erik might of had was interrupted by a young man nearly running into him with a hurried and unmeant “Sorry!” called back as the flurry of blond hair, cradling some black box wild with wires, scrambled down the hallway and out of sight.

For a moment Erik was forcibly reminded of Doug Ramsey, his own student from what seemed so long ago. From back when Erik really thought that maybe things would work out differently this time, and that the cycle of others suffering for Erik’s weaknesses could be broken. The young man had looked about the same age Doug had been when he died. Erik found himself blinking rapidly at the intense natural light streaming in from the windows.

“Doug Ramsey is alive now,” Charles said quietly, looking everywhere but directly at Erik.

“Ah,” Erik replied and wondered, not for the first time, at the sort of lives they lead and also how little knowing someone returned from the dead actually does to wipe away the original grief.

“Here, come to my office,” Charles said, nudging Erik forward with a hand on his elbow as if Erik was just another lost and confused teenager to be coddled and managed. Intolerable.

“You must be very proud of your new students, the girl I sat next to had scored over a million points in her video game,” Erik needled, even as he continued to walk along with Charles who didn't withdraw his hand.

“That’s good to hear, last period she couldn’t quite manage to get above the nine hundred thousand threshold," Charles said, mildly. "The important thing is that she’s improving.”

Erik found his lips twitching despite himself. “I think being dead might have improved your sense of humor.”

“I wouldn’t go that far, but let’s just say it gave me a unique perspective on how tedious it can be to be lectured to while you’re chained to your chair,” Charles said, lifting his eyebrows at Erik, sharing a conspiratorial moment. It felt comfortable, this thing between them. Erik could never bear for things to be comfortable, it made him twitchy, like sleeping on a too soft mattress slowly suffocating him.

“So, you’re playing teacher again. Think it will turn out better this time?” Erik asked, knowing that he was toeing the line of cruel even as he wondered at how inevitably they always seem to fall back into their usual patterns.

Charles didn’t respond immediately, and instead he paused outside a door. A scribbled index card that read 'C. Eisenhardt' was taped to the panel. “That remains to be seen,” Charles said, reaching into his pocket for his key. Erik stuck out his hand first, unlocking the door with a barely conscious twinge of his power, before holding it open.

Charles stepped in and Erik followed after almost knocking into Charles because the office as it turned out was barely more than a closet with a desk squeezed into it. A folding chair was set up in front of the desk, clearly not meant to invite long heart to heart sessions. It was a far cry from from Charles's Westchester arrangement with its heavy oak desk, fountain pens, wall bookcases, and a large bay window that took full advantage of the warm morning sun. The whole setup might have seemed unnecessarily lavish except that all the books were well-thumbed and the nibs on the pens obviously replaced. Erik had often reflected during his own occupancy of the office how the room seemed to reflect so much of the man himself, something of excellent quality put to good use.

The Charles Xavier of now, looking more like a graduate student than a professor, watched him carefully, leaning against his particle board desk so that they could stand without touching. Erik allowed the door to shut behind him.

"Well, what could you expect? I don't have tenure," Charles said at last, rubbing at the back of his head, drawing Erik's attention to the fact that his hair had grown beyond the inch or so of stubble from before, yet another alteration.

"Are you growing your hair out?" Erik asked.

Charles's eyebrows rose and he dropped his hand back to his side in apparent self-consciousness. "I'm not sure," Charles said. "Honestly, I've never really had a choice before, so it's a bit beyond my area of expertise." Charles gave a small, self-deprecating smile.

It hadn't occurred to Erik until that moment that he had no idea what Charles had looked like as a child. All the photographs and paintings that hung in the Xavier mansion always depicted him as firmly middle-aged. (Except, of course, the one framed black and white Polaroid on Charles's desk of the two of them in Israel, smiling, their arms around each other's shoulders, painfully, impossibly young). It felt sometimes that they knew everything there was to know about each other, only now to be caught flat-footed by something like hair of all things.

"I had always assumed that your white hair came from the camps, but you've gone through your own rebirth and it's still the same," Charles paused and leaned forward, lifting a hand towards Erik, telegraphing the motion so that he could step away. Erik remained where he was. It was a perfunctory gesture, nothing more than adjusting a few strands of hair that must have been unsettled by a New York City wind in early spring. The touch felt like an admission somehow.

"I shaved it off," Erik said.

"What?" Charles’s hand went still.

"My hair, I shaved it off after you had... gone away." Charles had died. He had died and Erik had simply stood back and let it happen, as it always happened, again and again and again.

"It suited me then." It was nothing more than the bald facts, but Erik felt exposed somehow, strange considering what else they have done with each other. Charles wouldn't meet his eyes.

"Why did you want me to come, Charles?" Erik asked, voice low.

Charles drew his hand away at last as his mouth turned hard and mulish. Erik knew all too well the slightly shifty narrowing of his eyes that meant that Charles was loathe to give up one of his secrets, like a dragon being parted with a single cup of his vast hoard.

"There's a gallery opening tonight," Charles said, with grudging capitulation. He reached back towards his desk, retrieving something and putting it in Erik's hand. It was an invitation to a gallery opening for an exhibit called Rebirth, the date and time was for that evening and the location was the university art building.

Erik glanced up at Charles with frank disbelief. "You brought me halfway around the world because you wanted a date?" Three days of mental needling because Charles didn't want to be alone while eating small blocks of cheese and looking at incomprehensible art.

"Well, a date is rather hard to find when everyone you know thinks you're dead," Charles said.

Erik crossed his arms, remembering the growing unease that sat in the back of his head like an uninvited house guest.

"There's more to this. More that you're not telling me," Erik said. Charles's priorities had always been a mystery to Erik, but he knew that gallery openings weren't one of them, at least not when they weren't giving Charles a prime opportunity to martyr himself.

‘Maybe he just missed you,’ came an insidious sentimental thought that sounded much too like the younger Jean Grey. That was at least one thing Erik appreciated about Charles's approach to telepathy. In all likelihood he probably heard far more than you ever wanted him to, but his general air of self-preoccupation meant that he wasn't going to bring it up or give the impression that he had heard anything at all. Younger Jean Grey on the other hand had all these ideas about actually talking about feelings that Erik was sure Charles had certainly never taught her.

"Jean always did have her own approach to things," Charles said, with a philosophical air, but then sighed, his fingers picking at his desk, digging into the soft wood. "You're not wrong that I'm... concerned that there might be something strange about this show, but it could just as easily be nothing."

"Professor Charles Xavier wrong?" Erik mocked.

"It's happened more times than you could possibly imagine," Charles said, his lips upturned in a small and bitter smile.

A silence fell between them and Erik found himself staring at the badly painted wall, unable to tell whether the tightening in his chest and the throbbing in his head originated in himself or was a continuation of Charles's or some impossible symbiotic chimera formed from the both of them. How many years had Erik waited, steeped in his own bitterness, longing to hear those very words? Dreaming for Charles to cede just that much, since the first day they met when they were young and wanted so much for the world to be different than it was; cleaved inevitably together even as they were cleaved apart.

The cramped office now seemed claustrophobic, far too small to possibly contain all these old memories and all these old regrets, like a thimble trying to hold a hurricane.

"I'll go, if only to see what could be giving you such trouble," Erik said.

"In that case, put this on," Charles said, reaching into his pocket and taking out something that caught the flat fluorescent light. Erik stuck out his hand without thinking and Charles dropped a gold ring onto his palm. "I think this might… simplify matters tonight." Charles said, as he took another ring out of his pocket and put it on.

Erik raised an eyebrow because nothing Charles had ever done could be called simple, but he slid the ring onto the appropriate finger and only had to make minor adjustments to perfect the fit. This felt new and old, once again Erik found himself another chess piece in Charles's game with some unknown opponent, but at the same time the Charles from before never would have even joked about something like this… the gold in the ring was of surprisingly good quality and thrummed through his senses. Erik felt a bit like an archeologist these days trying to carve out where the stratification layers lay between the future and the past.

"And now what, exactly?" Erik asked.

Charles ignored Erik's question as he stood up straight and adjusted his tie, the aura of his ability shifted from an ebbing mental sea to a rigid wall that encompassed both of them. The smile on Charles's lips was a tight strained thing as he tucked a hand in Erik's elbow and said, "Shall we go?"

Erik considered shaking Charles very hard and refusing to stop until he gave Erik the details of what exactly was going on. There was once a time that Erik would have done this without any second thought or hesitation, but years and hardship and a trail of broken relationships left in his wake had taught Erik something of patience. For all it made him feel terribly old, Erik decided to let this charade play itself out, and placed his hand over Charles's.

"Of course. Lead on, my dear Charles."

* * *

 

The first painting in the gallery was the Mona Lisa. Erik stopped short.

It wasn't one of those glossy reproductions found on postcards and keychains the world over. Erik took a few more steps forward, pushing a few chatting academics out of the way to better take in the cracked and yellowed varnish, the oil on wood, the maddening ambiguity of her smile. It was a forgery, of course, there was no way it could anything different, but all the same it was an astoundingly well-crafted one.

"Oh, she has eyebrows in this one," Charles said, making his way to Erik's side. And there the eyebrows were.

Erik took a step back and glanced to his right where Picasso's Guernica and Klimt's The Kiss were mounted on the off-white walls as if they had always been there, belonged there even. Both of them as beautifully rendered as the Mona Lisa in front of them, but all the same they were all undoubtedly— "Fakes," Erik breathed.

"Well, I'm sure the artist would argue it's more complicated than that, but you're right. These are definitely not the originals," Charles said.

"Professor Eisenhardt! You came!" Erik turned, the owner of the voice a young woman who he recognized as the student playing video games in the back of Charles's class. She looked different now, wearing a smart blazer, her hair pulled tightly back, the lazy student metamorphosed into the young professional.

"Hello, Mary, thank you so much for the invitation. Oh, and this is my husband, Michael Xavier, he’s a mutant like I am." Charles motioned to Erik who managed not to look askance at Charles for electing to share that information when he found his hand clasped in a slightly damp, but very enthusiastic grip.

"It's so wonderful to meet you! Everyone in my study group absolutely loves Dr. Eisenhardt’s class! He actually manages to make philosophy interesting, and I’m not just saying this because he’s standing right there and midterms are next week,” Mary said with a grin that she directed in Charles’s direction.

“Of course not,” Charles said and motioned at the gallery. “You must be very proud of this installation, it is really something unique.”

Mary flushed with pleasure, but demurely shook her head. “It was a group effort of course, and a lot of credit has to be given to Mr. Heidler who was very… particular about how everything was set up, but I must admit”—she paused to send an admiring glance about at the paintings and the elegantly dressed people staring at them—”it all came out perfectly.”

“Speaking of the man of the hour, have you seen Mr. Heidler anywhere?” Charles asked.

“Not yet,” Mary said, looking over shoulder quickly as if to determine that the devil hadn’t been summoned by his own name. “He must be around here somewhere though, if I run into him I’ll be sure to send him your way— Excuse me! Please take a step back from that!” Mary rushed away towards another guest who appeared to be smelling one of the paintings.

“Mr. Heidler?” Erik asked as Charles slid his hand once more into the crook of Erik’s arm and began to guide them further into the gallery.

“He’s the artist responsible for these fakes,” Charles said quietly, but failed to give any further explanation as he stopped another couple who he apparently recognized and Erik was once again shaking hands and exchanging vague pleasantries with strangers who they moved on from upon the admission that they too had not seen the sought for Mr. Heidler.

They moved past Van Gogh’s Starry Night with the stars out of alignment and Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus rising out of the sea in a clam shell rather than a scallop as Charles stopped them to speak with another guest and then another, but Mr. Heidler had apparently escaped the attention of all of them, though Charles and Erik did not. With each introduction of themselves as husbands and mutants it was impossible not to notice how the raised eyebrows and lingering stares grew more pronounced the farther in they ventured. Somehow Erik doubted it was just because of his magenta tie.

“We’re getting looks, Charles. If you were hoping to avoid being conspicuous, you’ve made a strategic error,” Erik murmured.

Charles only leaned more obviously on Erik’s arm and made a show of putting his lips near Erik’s ear. “Just follow my lead and keep enjoying the art.”

“I’m not sure if you can really call this art,” Erik groused.

“Don’t be so predictable. This is as much art as those terrible statues you feel compelled to make whenever you’re having a bad episode. Whether it’s good art or not…” Charles trailed off, pausing in front of Dali’s The Persistence of Memory, the clock’s hand in the wrong position.

“They’re just copies, changing a few details here and there doesn’t make it something new,” Erik said.

“But that’s the point, isn’t it?” Charles said, eyes still focused on the painting. “It’s not so much about the work itself, but the question it raises: at what point of alteration does that piece become unrecognizable? When does the reproduction become its own original?”

“I think you just read the artist statement before arriving so you could show off,” Erik said.

Charles turned his head to give Erik a nonplussed expression, eyebrows arched. “I can never impress you, can I?” Charles asked acerbically, but there was a shadow of an honest smile tugging at the corner of his lips. The rigid mental shield around them fluctuated for a moment, long enough for Erik to feel once again that stomach-curdling disquiet that lay underneath the surface of Charles’s apparent calm and swimming there rested an unguessed at truth. Charles brought his shields back up tightly, but his slightly averted eyes meant that he knew what Erik had seen.

“You didn’t want to bring me here, did you?” Erik said, framing it as a question even if they both now knew that it wasn’t one.         

Charles fiddled with his cufflinks. “I thought about it, but decided that involving you would only complicate matters.”

“But some part of you still called out to me from halfway around the world,” Erik said.

“It appears so… It seems that my control is still adjusting itself to not being on the astral plane,” Charles admitted, angling his face away in mild embarrassment as though someone had told him there was something in his teeth.

“Are you going to tell me what all this is about now?” Erik asked.

Charles lifted his head and there was something naked in his expression, his lips slightly parted before something shifted in his face and instead he took a step closer, putting a hand on Erik’s elbow. “Kiss me,” he ordered.

Erik leaned down and pressed his lips to Charles’s. The kiss quick and chaste as Charles pulled back and turned to say with exaggerated surprise, “Mr. Heidler! So sorry, this painting just seems to just have that effect.”

The long-awaited Mr. Heidler was a pale, paunchy middle-aged man whose tucked in chin and tightened knuckles around a half-drained wine-glass suggested a discomfort he was vainly trying to hide. “I can’t say that had been my intention, but you know these days that artists are supposed to be open to interpretation. Glad you could make it, Dr. Eisenhardt.” Mr. Heidler stuck out his hand which Charles reached out to touch before dropping his hand back to his side.

“Congratulations on the show, it’s very... thought-provoking. My husband and I were discussing how you landed on such an interesting topic, wherever did you even come up with the idea of rebirth?” Charles asked.

Heidler’s smile grew more genuine as he drew himself to his full height, apparently to better project. “Rebirth really is a tricky thing isn’t it? Originally I was going to call the show ‘Forgery or Rebirth’ but the more I worked on my pieces the less of a difference there seemed to be between the two subjects, and I’ve always found one-word titles snappier, don’t you think?” He continued on without pause. “Any sort of remaking is a rebirth isn’t it? It’s only the imposition of petty human morality that tries to define what is and isn’t genuine,” Heidler catechized, waving his free hand airily as if ‘petty human morality’ was a pest to be swatted at.

 _Is Heidler some kind of mutant? Is that why we’re here?_ Erik thought loudly at Charles, he didn’t relish the idea.

“So, if you can paint what other great painters have painted doesn’t that make you one of them? Is that your point?” Erik asked, unimpressed by this man, his art, and still no closer to understanding what had made Charles so nervous his subconscious had gone running to Erik of all people for help.

Heidler seemed surprised and slightly affronted by Erik speaking at all, but Charles placed his hand on Erik’s chest, a fake smile firmly on his face. “Don’t take him too seriously, Mr. Heidler. Michael thinks of himself as a bit of an artist too, he makes things with scrap metal you really wouldn’t believe,” Charles said at once conciliatory and a besotted husband.

 _No, he’s not a mutant,_ Charles thought back, hints of strain coloring the words in contrast to the syrupy friendliness of his actual voice.

“Well.” Heidler took a sip from his glass, which was probably supposed to seem sophisticated but he was clearly just stalling for time to put his words together. “Then as artists we both understand that we have been given a higher calling not to be confined, but to create! All of these pieces simply came to me, almost in a trance. I am not their master so much as their conduit. So what if this isn’t the original?” Heidler waved his hand at where the Persistence of Memory hung from the wall. “If someone from the future were to discover it when the original had been long lost, who’s to say that it wouldn’t become the original? What really makes something an original or a copy? Isn’t it only imperfect human memory that makes it so? Can we not rewrite truth— reality itself!— by enforcing our own vision if we are simply forceful enough!” Heidler concluded with a smirk that tested Erik sorely.

 _If this man isn’t a mutant, then why are we wasting our time speaking with him?_ Erik thought and could only hope his disdain transferred along with the words.

“Perhaps it might be simpler to think of the works as separate entities entirely. That in the process of being created, even in the image of something else, that they are in some way fundamentally changed?” Charles suggested, trying for the detached tone he used for debate, but Erik could plainly hear from decades of their own arguments the pleading that undergirded the words. As if Charles could try to hide the terrifying relevance of whatever point he was trying to make by putting on a mask of theoreticals.

A smoky memory of late nights in a bar in Haifa came to Erik’s mind, with a different Charles Xavier leaning into Erik’s space, using that exact same tone, “Let us say for the sake of argument, my friend, that these _homo superiors_ do exist…”

Erik glanced down at Charles whose hand was still on his chest, their eyes met. “But the continuity of what came before can’t be thrown away. Forgetting brings us no closer to the truth,” Erik rebutted.

“I have no interest in forgetting,” Charles said, softly, the hand on Erik’s chest curling into a fist but not moving away.

Heidler made a noise with his throat, breaking the small, hazy world that had wrapped the two of them to the exclusion of all else. A part of Erik considered dispassionately how easy it would be to attach this self-important man to the ceiling so that he and Charles could continue their discussion without an interloper.

 _Please don’t_ , Charles said in Erik’s mind, though Erik could also catch the slightest flavor of amusement attached to the words. Aloud Charles said instead: “My apologies, Mr. Heidler, it seems we’re a little too used to arguing with each other. Now, don’t you have something terribly important that you need to see to?”

If Heidler recognized the rudeness of this sudden dismissal he didn't show it. “You are absolutely right! I really must go, but I hope your... husband has no hard feelings over the argument, iron sharpens iron and all that,” Heidler said, chuckling at his own joke before ducking away further into the gallery and out of sight with poorly hidden urgency.

“And why exactly did you call me out of Madripoor for that man?” Erik asked.

Charles’s lips were a hard line for a moment before he finally spoke with resignation. “Imagine, if you will, Mr. Heidler dressed like Charlie Chaplin.”

Erik scowled at Charles, but closed his eyes and went along with the thought experiment, imagining Heidler bumbling on in baggy trousers and a small bowler hat, and then adding the mustache… oh. That couldn’t be right, but Charles would never be wrong about these kinds of things.

“I thought Captain America had taken care of all the Hitler clones,” Erik said, opening his eyes. It was the one thing that the man could actually be counted on for.

“If there is one universal constant in our lives, my friend, it is that there are always more clones,” Charles replied with the tired certainty of a sage.

Erik couldn’t refute this, not anymore than he could refute how the eyes on them from all the other guests were no longer the darting glances of busybodies, but had turned into something more intent and menacing. The air felt charged and thick as though there was a gas leak somewhere and they were all standing around waiting for who was going to strike the match.

“Professor Eisenhardt!” Erik turned to see Mary hurrying towards them, ponytail bouncing, her blazer slightly askew, her eyes burning with a barely contained hatred. “I’m afraid you have to leave now,” she demanded.

“And why is that?” Charles asked, but, in the manner of all unbearable professors, it was said in such a way that suggested he already knew the answer.

“We don’t think you or your kind belong here,” Mary said, her lips curled back in disgust. The strolling groups of guests were clustered together now, forming an onlooking crowd, boxing them in and radiating malice like a miasma.

“Are you going to stop them, or shall I?” Erik asked, unconcerned. A group of humans clutching wine-glasses and dessert plates did not rate overly high on his list of potential threats.

Charles twisted his mouth into a moue of distaste, and Erik felt briefly once more the roiling trepidation in the back of his skull that belay the neutral expression Charles wore.

“I think I had better put an end to this before it gets too out of hand. Please try not hurt them if you could, and destroy as many of the paintings as you can manage, the hate-ray devices are installed on the back of their frames,” Charles said, and took that moment to break out of the slowly encroaching circle of humans and make his way further into the gallery.

The other humans immediately tried to grab for him, which Erik took as his cue to tear two nearby paintings out of the wall and wrap the metal around the pursuers legs, blocking their way to Charles and gaining their undivided attention.

“Mutie! Mutie! He’s a mutie!” Came the half-slurred chorus of enraged, brainwashed humanity. Erik didn’t even try to hide his grin. There was nothing quite like the simple joys of single-handedly taking on a hate mob.

With a sweep of his arm that was really more for show than function, Erik pulled at the three paintings from the partition to his right, splintering a fake Wanderer above the Sea of Fog in the process as he wrapped the metal found in the back of their frames around his three most immediate attackers and attached them to a wall largely unharmed.

Another attacker, taking advantage of Erik’s brief distraction, took another painting off the wall and tried to brain Erik with it. Erik managed to twist out of the way, and reached with his power to the buckles of the woman’s heels that she had worn clearly not anticipating that she was going to be joining a murderous hate mob that day and sent her skittering into the other guests. It took barely a thought for Erik to summon the nails from the painting frames to pin down his fallen attackers.

The last human left standing ran blindly towards Erik, holding his wineglass aloft, heedless of the fallen bodies surrounding him. Erik’s power seized the ring around the man’s finger and flung him into the Persistence of Memory with a satisfying crack. Erik wondered if Charles would be annoyed at him for being unnecessarily rough, or worse send him one of those mildly disappointed looks that made Erik dwell on all the unspoken words that could be put into the quirk of single eyebrow, even if it never kept Erik from actually doing whatever he was going to do.

The thought of Charles reminded Erik that it was probably time to find him and get to the bottom of what exactly was going on here.

Guided by his sense of the gold ring Charles wore, Erik navigated the spread of prone bodies. He only just cleared them when Heidler came running past, a purple robe he certainly had not been wearing before flapping behind him as Charles appeared and sent the man to the ground with a tackle that made up with enthusiasm whatever it lacked in form.

“Couldn’t you have stopped him with your mind?” Erik asked, as he dismantled with his power the light fixture above them and wound it firmly around Heidler’s struggling body. Plaster dust sprinkled down on all three of them like snow.

“Well, I haven’t had a chance to play rugby in a few decades, so indulge me,” Charles said, the lightness of his words belying the dead seriousness of his expression as he came to his feet, staring down at Heidler who was still struggling desperately against his bonds.

“You may bind me! You may stop my army! You might even slay me, mutant filth! But I am eternal! Again and again I rise from the ashes of this broken world! Again and again I shall be the great teacher and you and your kind will learn your place—” Erik used the fillings in Heidler’s molars to clamp his jaw shut, stopping him mid-rant much to his muffled outrage.

“You know, he might have had some very cognizant thoughts on economic regulation policies that he was saving for the end,” Charles said dryly, brushing plaster dust from his slacks.

“Undo whatever mind control he’s under, or stand aside and let me take care of him,” Erik said. The hungry eagerness he might have once felt for this kind of thing had left him long ago, but if a newly resurrected Hatemonger had come into power then Erik wasn't going to simply stand aside because he found the best method for stopping him distasteful.

Charles looked down at the struggling, gagged man with the sort of look some people gave to cockroaches, torn between visceral revulsion and the pity of understanding that the creature’s nature wasn’t its own fault. “I’m afraid it’s not so simple. They created him to sow chaos, spread hate and fear”—Charles didn’t specify the ‘they’ because he didn’t need to, there was always a ‘they’—”but something went wrong, he was taken out of the facility and built a life apparently unaware of his original purpose, that is until now. It’s not mind control, so much as there is a switch in his brain. I could turn it off for a time, but it could just as easily be switched again and we might not be on hand to subdue him before he does real damage.”

“So, what is your solution?” Erik asked sharply, his mind already made up to combat whatever facile decision Charles has undoubtedly come to to try to save the man, putting everyone else at risk so that he could have the illusion of keeping his hands clean. This would probably shatter the tentative peace they had built between them, but Erik was prepared. Heidler wasn’t the only one caught up in vicious cycles of certain behaviors.

“I… I don’t know,” Charles admitted. The link between them blazed to life and Erik realized at last that it wasn’t the existence of a Hitler clone bent on world domination that had Charles conflicted subconscious reaching out to him, but instead it had been the conundrum of what was to be done when he was stopped.

“You… want me to tell you what the ethical thing to do in this situation is?” Erik asked, feeling unmoored in some fundamental way, as if magnetic north had suddenly shifted.

Charles sighed in a way that was simultaneously condescending and fond. “Is that really so surprising, old friend? Think what you like, but you’ve always been a great source of inspiration to me.” Erik stared and Charles slightly shifted his eyes. “I suppose, I also thought that if I didn’t like your answer, I could always just take the opposite stance. It’s given me clarity in the past.”

Erik snorted, but at least this seemed like the truth, or at least as close to the truth as Charles ever really allowed himself to get. Erik felt that it was only fair for him to answer in kind. “Well, we could kill him. As it stands right now, he’s a terrible threat to everyone, mutants and humans alike.”

Charles tilted his head thoughtfully. “Yes, but it does extreme at this stage doesn’t it? He might have had horrible intentions, but what he actually managed to accomplish doesn’t really extend beyond a little mind control and some property damage.” There was the faintest twist of a self-deprecating smile on his lips. “Something aren’t we all a little guilty of?”

“Intentions are more important than you give them credit for,” Erik said.

“Perhaps, but people can also change,” Charles said, but there was a slight hesitation in how he said it, as if it were more of a question than an assertion.

Erik thought of how once he would have driven a metal splinter through Heidler’s head and gone on with his day without a second thought. There was a part of him that missed those simpler days, when everything had seemed more black and white. Erik brushed at the plaster dust that clung to his suit jacket, it fell to the ground like ash.

“Then it all depends on whether he’s worth giving a second chance,” Erik said.

“Hatemonger, no. You’ve accused me of foolish soft-heartedness before, but it doesn’t extend that far. But Edmund Heidler? Whose worst crime is being a mildly unpleasant art snob? Yes.” Charles’s foot nudged a piece of splintered frame. “However, the line between original and reproduction is complicated.”

Erik raked a hand through his hair, more plaster dust falling around him in chalky clouds. “Maybe the only way to preserve the painting is to destroy it entirely,” Erik offered.

Charles contemplated Heidler still squirming in his bonds, entirely deaf to the conversation going on above his head. “That metaphor doesn’t make any sense, but… a clean slate, tabula rasa.”

“Art snob Edmund Heidler wakes up with no memories after an unidentified attack on his gallery show,” Erik said, a plan piecing itself together.

“That doesn’t really answer the larger questions of culpability, does it?” Charles said, kneeling by Heidler’s side, the plaster dust in his hair and on his face making him look as old as Erik felt.

“No, but it does keep our people safe. And can’t we rewrite the truth if we have simply have the strength and will to?” Erik asked.

Charles’s expression was grave. “You don’t believe that.”

“You’re right, I don’t. But he did. Think of it as a compromise,” Erik said.

“To compromise then,” Charles finally said, pressing his palms against either side of Heidler’s head.

Erik stood on the opposite side of the street from the gallery, watching as an ambulance with its sirens wailing pulled up to the curb. He wondered who they would end up blaming for the damage, of everything this felt strangest to Erik; he wasn’t used to not taking credit for the things he’d done. Tipping his hat lower, Erik began to walk away.

Charles had promised that all the guests’ recollections of what happened would be very blurry before he had headed off to tie up his own loose ends. That at least seemed entirely like the Charles Erik remembered. Someone so stupidly trusting that it didn’t even occur to him to worry that Erik might go back and solve the whole dilemma in the neatest way possible.

Erik sighed and imagined Charles tidying up his postage stamp office. Without a doubt by tomorrow no one would be able to recall that Professor Eisenhardt had ever existed. Except Erik of course. It was a strangely lonely picture, Charles packing up his pens and notebooks in his satchel and then going where?

Erik had no idea what Charles did now when he wasn’t knocking on doors for late night trysts with old enemies or tracking down clones of dictators. Now it was Erik comfortably ensconced in a mansion with a brood of danger-prone teenagers while Charles was in the wind pursuing his unknown goals. The slight tugging at the back of Erik’s mind had gone quiet, slipping away like a lover leaving in the middle of the night. Was this melancholic curiosity how Charles had always thought about Erik?

Erik’s mind skittered away from the thought and with finely honed skill boxed up the whole snarl of contemplation and put it somewhere to be ignored. Erik had more immediate concerns like where he could charter a plane back to Madripoor in the next twenty-four hours. Erik worried the band on his finger, and realized that he was still wearing the ring Charles had given him. It was funny in a way, it was only needed for a farce, but the gold itself was genuine. Erik slid the ring from his finger, pocketing it before continuing on his way. He needed to get back home.

**Author's Note:**

> Ever write a fic so painfully self-indulgent you recognize that it must be basically unreadable for anyone else? Yeah, this is definitely that fic for me, sorry guys. Halfway through polishing Tempus Fugit which references some relatively recent comic stuff but I think most stands on its own, my brain got the idea that maybe I should follow that up with another story that continues to lean on current comic storylines but also references a weird one-shot Captain America story from 2011, vaguely refer to some Grant Morrison stuff, and ruminates on that one time Magneto got turned into a baby. You know, for the broad mass appeal.
> 
> I have at least one other fic set in this universe outlined and partially written, it's a little more coherent and self-contained than whatever this is, so heads up, I guess?


End file.
